Our invention pertains to a cleaning cassette, or an empty casing in the approximate shape of a magnetic tape cassette, for use in cleaning the magnetic transducer head of an apparatus for data transfer with the magnetic tape cassette. The cleaning cassette of our invention has particular utility in conjunction with magnetic tape cassette apparatus of the type described and claimed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 658,293 filed Oct. 5, 1984, U.S. Pat. No. 4,701,817 by Uemura and assigned to the assignee of the instant application, although we do not wish our invention to be unnecessarily limited by this particular type apparatus.
As far as we are aware, two different methods have been practiced for cleaning the magnetic transducer head of tape cassette apparatus. One is to manually wipe the head with a cleaning stick having on one end a body of cotton or like absorbent material, with the absorbent body impregnated with a cleaning solution available commercially. The other is to use a cleaning tape cassette having a length of cleaning tape packaged in cassette form just like a magnetic tape cassette.
We object to the use of the cleaning stick alone because it is rather difficult to hold the absorbent body exactly against the gapped data transfer surface of the transudcer head. In the tape cassette apparatus proposed by the noted patent application Ser. No. 658,293, for example, the transducer head is positioned in a confined space and some distance away from a cassette entrance slot defined in the front face of the apparatus and is oriented in a direction parallel to, rather than toward, the entrance slot. Inserted into and through the entrance slot, the cleaning stick may fail to clean the data transfer surface of the head.
Cleaning tape cassettes are much easier to use, and the cleaning tape can be held unfailingly against the head. However, the head will not be cleaned by the cleaning tape as thoroughly as when the cleaning stick is used properly.